The Revenge of the Never Trumpers
Less than a year ago, the so-called Never Trump movement had been left for dead.
President Donald Trump tweeted, in a statement remembered mainly because of its final phrase, that “the Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!”
In retrospect, Trump’s reference to respirators seems strange in light of the coronavirus pandemic. But such near-death metaphors were common back then in reference to Never Trumpers, a group of current and former conservatives who, to varying degrees, repudiated Trump as the Republican presidential nominee and then as the president. “NeverTrumpism is not dead, but it is on life-support with no possibility of returning to the vitality it displayed in 2016,” , wrote in one op-ed. “Were it not for the news media’s eagerness to amplify the voices of those who hate the president, the movement would have long since been relegated to the more obscure corners.
